Equal Parts Cocktails

I’m a sucker for an equal parts cocktail. They’re often excellent drinks in their own right, they’re dead simple to make and remember the spec for, and the elegance of combining equal amounts of a few ingredients that form more than the sum of their parts makes my nerd-brain and tastebuds happy.

Let’s cut through the jargon—“equal parts” means what it says on the tin. You take an equal amount of each ingredient, mix them together, and voila! You have a drink.

There’s a ton of variety among these—different base liquors and modifiers that combine for a lot of interesting results. Here are a few of my favorites:

4 Parts

For all of these, combine equal amounts of each ingredient in a shaker. I like to aim for 3 oz of liquid per drink, so 3/4 oz of each will do the trick. Shake well, and strain into a glass—I like a fun little coupe or Nick and Nora, but you do you.

Paper Plane

Parts: bourbon, Aperol, Nonino, lemon juice

Corpse Reviver #2

Parts: gin, Cointreau, Lillet Blanc, lemon juice

Last Word

Parts: gin, maraschino liqueur, Cointreau, lime juice

Naked & Famous

Parts: mezcal, Aperol, yellow Chartreuse, lime juice

The Yellow Cocktail

Parts: gin, Suze, yellow Chartreuse, lemon juice

Crop Top

Parts: gin, Amaro Montenegro, grapefruit liqueur, lemon juice

3 Parts

1 oz of each part, unless you want more or less.

Negroni

Parts: gin, Campari, sweet vermouth Combine your parts in a mixing glass and stir until chilled. Strain into a cool rocks glass (with a big ice cube in it of course)and garnish with an orange twist.

The common refrain is that the first Negroni you’ll hate while you’re drinking it, but you’ll soon find yourself oddly wanting it again. Before long, you’re a proper hipster throwing back these bitter, herbal, boozy drinks while eating tin fish and listening to vinyl albums of Italio Disco.

Negroni Sbagliato

Parts: sparkling wine, Campari, sweet vermouth Need to ease into the Negroni world? This one’s your passport. Use sparkling wine like Prosecco instead of gin to whet your whistle with a little less grimacing.

Boulevardier

Parts: bourbon, Campari, sweet vermouth

Are you more of a whiskey kid? This is the brown, bitter, sweet cousin of the Negroni. Modern specs often call for boosting the whiskey to more like 2:1:1, but I like mine with the classic 1:1:1 build (especially if I’m calling the cocktail ‘dessert’). If you’re feeling extra vegetal, sub the Campari for Cynar and you have a Man About Town.

Old Pal

Parts: rye, Campari, dry vermouth

Alright the gig’s up, most of the 3-part cocktails here are just incremental steps away from the Negroni, and the modern specs for most have them have evolved to 2:1:1. But we’re going to keep going nonetheless, so here’s another! This time we swap in rye for the bourbon and dry vermouth for the sweet. It’s still in the brown

Bijou

Parts:

2 Parts

Calling these cocktails is perhaps too generous—these are… basically just shots.

You can do a quick one-two-shoot, or if time and tastebuds allow, slow sip it neat or with a rock as you would a dram of whisky.

Ferarri

Parts: Fernet, Campari

Full Monte

Parts: tequila, Amaro Montenegro

Hard Start

Parts: Fernet Branca, Branca Menta

Malori

Parts: Malort, Campari

Carajillo

Parts: Espresso, Liquor 43

Newport

Parts: Mezcal, Branca Menta

Zucca Joe

Parts: Zucca, coffee liqueur